734 THE ALPINE FLORA OF COLORADO. 
it may be that the Littorina, the animal unlike that of the Trivia 
being a vegetarian, finds its favorite food in some marine vege- 
table form peculiar to the granite, or that some form of vegetation, 
which grows upon the shales as well as the harder rock, has some 
quality imparted to it by the granite which renders it more pala- 
table to the Littorina, and hence its apparent preference for a 
granitic habitat or station. 
THE ALPINE FLORA OF COLORADO. 
BY REV. E. L. GREENE. 
By means of the collections made and distributed a few years 
since by Dr. C. C. Parry and Messrs. Hall and Harbour, the 
botany of the Alpine region of the Rocky Mountains is very we 
represented to the few who have been able to avail themselves of 
sets of specimens made by these collectors. Dr. Parry has been 
collecting in this region again during the past season, and will 
probably soon be ready to distribute sets that will very beautifully 
represent this Alpine flora of our West. For the pleasure of 
many interested parties, who may fail to procure these rare and 
valuable collections, we purpose giving, through our common 
friend the Naruratist, a brief sketch of some of these beauties 
of the higher mountains, as they appear to one who has more than 
once visited them in their Alpine homes. 
At the altitude of nearly eleven thousand feet, as one passes 
upward among the pines and spruces which become more scatter- 
ing in numbers, and more and more dwarfed in stature, because — 
we are rapidly approaching the limit of trees, no one who notices 
flowers will fail to observe first of all, the brilliant painted cup 
(Castilleia), the scarlet flowered varieties of which might at first 
be mistaken for the common Castilleia coccinea. But this plant 1s 
of a quite distinct species; and notwithstanding the exceeding 
brightness of its flowers, at this particular altitude, passing as they 
do into almost every possible shade of red, and sometimes to a 
beautiful mauve or purple (so that it is difficult to find two differ- a 
_ ent roots producing the same color of flower), its true name 18 
